Major Post 09 – Beastars

Posted on by Thang Tsz Ching, Janelle

Last month in October, an new anime series released in Japan called Beastars. I haven’t watched the newest episodes yet and I don’t want to spoil myself too much but basically the story is about a wolf in school life.

The settings of the story : Animals replaced humans. Animals walked on two legs and behave like humans. The beginning of the series is happened at school so the students are all kinds of animals from giraffes to mice, lions to foxes, wearing in uniforms. The world has a strict rule of no hunting. The world has developed new food for carnivores so they won’t starve. Even though there is a rule, in between predators and preys, bias still stands.

At the beginning of series, an accident happened, a herbivore got killed by a carnivore. Preys are all afraid and have arguments with the other predator students. The student who got killed was a member of drama club. They are going to perform live at school very soon. They continued to practice under this pressured atmosphere.

I do not want to spoil myself so this is where I stopped and what I knew so far. The series is still going on, it is a pretty interesting story plot.
Its opening is made with a very unique style that is not seen very much in other anime openings : stop-motion.
I am pretty sure this is stop-motion but there were parts of liquid flowing down, it looked very smooth. I wonder if it is made with resin or some sorts of transparent glue? Or was this not a stop-motion at all, or traditional stop-motion mixed with CGI.
( The video ended with a sharp twist, I think Professor Jake, you will like it xD. )

Major Post 10: Stop-Motion

Posted on by Sammy Liu

We shifted from looking at using single lines to using objects, and more 3D/manual based forms of animation (stop-motion). The class screened various influential animators who demonstrated foundational techniques fo future artists to build on.

Artists include:
Arthur Melbourne-Cooper – Matches Appeal (1899)

Ladislaw Starewicz – Soviet animator
Starewicz had a scientific background, and his work stemmed from wanting to document two stag beetles in battle.
His contribution in stop-motion techniques has been inspiring many to continue to develop the possibilities with stop-motion.

Willis O’Brien
O’Brien started the merge of live-action and stop-motion; basically the beginning of VFX.
Very impressively, one of his first works was a adaptation of King Kong, called “Mighty Joe Young” (1949). He named his style of work Dynamation, which kick started off the possibility of all future science-fiction anomalies, greek mythical tales, and superhero action.

George Pal – A Hungarian animator and filmmaker (1939).
He started Puppetoons – which the technique that replaces facial expressions on a puppet. The technique is continued by LAIKA in Coraline, ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls.
We watched his work, “Jasper And The Haunted House” (1942) which demonstrated a lot of cinematography. He was very aware of lighting, colour, perspective and composition – a step up to quality entertainment.

Professor also mentioned NFB again, a company that sponsored many of these artists. Channel4 in UK is a similar platform that carries on supporting contemporary artist creativity, especially in the commercial/T.V. world.

Sammy Liu

Major Post 9: Storytelling in “The Cameraman’s Revenge”

Posted on by Sydney McPherson

Ladislaw Starewicz is noted as the creator of the first stop motion puppet animation in 1910. Two years later, he created “The Cameraman’s Revenge”. I’ll be focusing on some of the storytelling techniques used in the film.

I read a small bit about Starewicz and I found that he does in fact use real insects in this animation and others. That added a challenge to creating the stopmotion, as Starewicz had to create puppeting skeletons and rigs to control the insects. This was successful, as the characters can stand upright and walk while staying balanced.

I noticed that in each scene, the camera is always flat and static. There are no closeups or medium shots; rather the camera stays pushed back, using full body shots to capture the insects and different environments. This stationary camera creates a unique cinematic feel compared to other animations I’ve seen that use dynamic cameras. The camera use makes it easier to focus on what actions are taking place, as I’m not focused on the aesthetics and visuals as much.

As is common in older films, text is used to tell the main story points, such as introducing Mr. and Mrs. Beetle or explaining that the grasshopper is the camera man. Because the camera is static and Starewicz’s puppets don’t have facial expressions, the text becomes vital in explaining to us what is happening when the animation isn’t clear enough.

I realized that films that don’t use dialogue require more from the viewer. Because there is no dialogue, the viewer cannot look away from the screen without missing what’s taking place in the story. They must watch the characters intently to understand to storyline. Films like “The Cameraman’s Revenge” usually feature a continuous soundtrack in the background that’s used to catch the viewer’s attention. The soundtrack is only one component of this, as the rest relies on solid storytelling, which this film exemplifies. It uses the text screens as mentioned before, establishing shots when cutting to new locations, a static camera to ensure all actions are clearly seen, and of course, solid stop motion animation.

Sydney McPherson

Major Post 9: Isle of Dogs

Posted on by LeAnn Schmitt

Today in class we learned about puppet animations and the uncanny valley is has carved into the animation world. Many amazing companies such as Laika (the creators of Box Trolls and Paranorman) and Tim Burton’s Studios (creators of Nightmare Before Christmas and the Corpse Bride) have made leaps and bounds in this type of animation.

In class we saw many beautiful and heavy animations that were produced outside of the two companies mentioned before. One that stuck with me was Barry Purves, Screen Play. This piece reminded me a lot of Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs. Not only because of the Japanese setting and theme but its dark, creative storytelling, and unsettling style. Upon further research into the creation of Isle of Dogs, I found out that 1,000 individual puppets were made for the production with an even split between 500 dogs and 500 humans. The human puppets were made of resin to achieve a warmer translucent skin (this technique was later used in Laika’s Paranorman). The rougher animation style was accomplished by shooting the whole film on twos.

I got the pleasure to see a handful of these puppets and some of the sets when they were on display in the museum on the Savannah Campus and I can say that I was blown away. It was so surreal to see these lively characters sitting still. It was almost as if I was waiting for them to spring to life. Linked below is a video of how the puppets were made.

LeAnn Schmitt

Major Post 02 – Kubo and The Two Strings

Posted on by Thang Tsz Ching, Janelle

In the old days, people made animation frame by frame. They have to draw all the actions one by one on the frames so that they can show them on screen. Nowadays it is much easier to create animation with all the help from software. While it does not seems to be old fashioned anymore, stop motion animation is still being created.
Stop motion animation has been around for centuries because it is one of the first generation of how an animation can be created. Making puppets and props are a extra process of the creation. Not only the one single character puppet has to be made, the expressions of characters, a LOT of props, the environment, a lot more to be considered based on how the story goes, will something break through the story, will someone transform, the process of transformation. In 2D and 3D animation, you can copy and paste on the next scenes, editing from there, saving time but in stop motion, you have to make everything that are needed for the production.

I am here to share my favourite stop motion movie so far – Kubo and The Two Strings. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to watch this movie in the cinema, I watched it from a website, I regret it so much. I love this movie no matter what but the feeling of watching it on the big screen will be epic.

The story is talking about a boy named Kubo. Kubo is a boy who has magical power. Everyday, he will go to the village and tell stories of his father, the almighty samurai, Hanzo with his shamisen(a Japanese instrument) and magical origami figures. He has a mother who has a deteriorating mental state. He was told not to stay out at night for the moon king will find him. However, one day he failed to reach home before the moon rises. He got attacked by a pair of sisters who introduced as his mother’s siblings. His mother saved him and sent him away, left alone to face her sisters.
Kubo woke up with a new ally, Monkey. Not long after he met Beetle with no memory. The three of them have to go on a journey to find the 3 legendary items, Sword Unbreakable, Breastplate and Helmet Invulnerable Impenetrable, in order to defeat the Moon King. Throughout this long journey, Kubo also discovered that Monkey was the reincarnated spirit of his mother and Beetle was his father who got cursed from falling in love with Kubo’s mother. Kubo was protected once again by his parents, his father and mother were killed in the end.
The Moon King appeared in front of Kubo and offered to give him immortality. Kugo refused so he started the epic fight with the Moon King who later transformed into a Moon Beast. In the end, he used the ultimate magic, Love and Memories to defeat the Moon King.

I highly recommend to watch this movie, it is still the best one I have watched so far. I adore the style of designing and the whole concept, they are very unique. The process of production is incredible too!

Major Post 2 – The Haunted Hotel

Posted on by Julia Reymundo

One of the films that intrigued me from the second class was, “The Haunted House” by John Stuart Blackton. This is why me and my partner for the first project drew inspiration from it. It was one of the first forms of stop motion, so of course it was interesting to see how it was done during that time. The world of stop motion has evolved into many things. Particularly, most people would know the film works of Laika and Aardman Animations. That wasn’t the only thing that first got me interested in stop motion animation. I remember watching this short film on YouTube by the creator, PES. I wanted to share this guy’s work because I think it is phenomenal and it displays how stopmotion can blur the lines between reality and animation. This stop motion animation short in particular was an Academy Award Nominee for Best Animated Short Film.

Julia Reymundo

Project 1-WIP 2-Production

Posted on by Julia Reymundo

Once LeAnn Schmitt and I finished shooting the stopmotion sequence, I started editing it on Adobe Premier Pro 2019. This is where we focused on placing sound effects for the actions show in the stop motion. From the previous post, our concept is about making a peanut butter and jelly sandwhich. Due to the simplicity of the concept itself, we agreed on using a lot of different sound effects but not too much of it.

The sound effects that were used both came from online and done in person. Although, it was quite difficult to do it in person since using a phone microphone captures all of the surrounding audio. I did however try to lessen the noise once I added it onto the video editing program. Finding online sources, was easy if you know how to find them properly. I was able to find a website that sourced free mp3s that had a good search engine. The sounds I used may have come from the literal object, however, I did also use sounds that came from random sources. (ex. mac and cheese). Once it was done, I double checked the video for any mistakes and exported it.

Julia Reymundo and LeAnn Schmitt

Laika, Kubo, Vinton- Icons of Stop motion and Claymation

Posted on by victoriacourchesne

-Major post 1

written by Victoria Courchesne

After completing the first project for our course, you might be curious about stop motion as an animation medium. What we know as Claymation today closely corresponds with the stop motion animation style of the 1900’s. One of Claymation’s most talented animators was a man named Will Vinton. In the 1970’s Vinton created his own animation studio he named after himself, Will Vinton Studios, in Portland Oregon. One of the studios most famous animations was the commercial they did for the Caifornia Raisins. The studio later became Laika studios, which has been nominated for four Oscars. The purpose of mentioning Laika is because they are my favorite Stop motion studio. Kubo and the two strings is a masterpiece of story, color, and music that has won the adoration of millions around the world. Even though the film was “ Stop motion”, the film used 3D modeling programs to create many of their assets, including Kubo’s face and the Giant Skeleton. It is interesting to compare the California Raisin ad’s Claymation style to the stop motion style the studio later adopted.

Sources:

https://area.autodesk.com/life-in-3d/5-fast-facts-on-kubo-and-the-two-strings-by-laika/

https://www.cartoonbrew.com/tag/will-vinton-studios

Some of the parts for Kubo’s face were modeled in Autodesk Inventor because of their size.

Project01: Object Animation | Documentation 2 | Production

Posted on by Sammy Liu

On the day of the shoot, it was boiling hot and extremely sunny.


Sammy: “I’m sure we got 3 shades darker after this, but the lighting was pretty and we initially wanted a natural environment.
We hit some problems with setting the tripod and getting a stable camera position at the first location of the shoot, so we had to decide to move else where.”

Wendy: “I think problem solving skills is definitely what we needed during the production process. We imagined lots of silly things that the food can do such as the using ketchup to do the explosion of the volcano.
We asked for only 3 little bags of ketchup from McDonald’s, but it was not enough at all. We wanted to pinch some holes on the package and squeeze it to make the explosion. It was just not working out as we imagined and our hands are full of ketchup. 🥫🥫🥫
What we can do better next time is to do a rehearsal before the acting shooting, so we can encounter and prepare for the problem we might have.”

Please check out our short “behind-the-scenes” clip we made for fun!

Wendy Kong

Claudia Lau

Sammy Liu

Project01: Object Animation | Documentation 1 | Planning and Storyboarding

Posted on by Sammy Liu

To start our brainstorming process, we met up in Macdonalds to look at possible props and eat lunch.

We wrote down immediate, silly ideas from looking at our possible props, noticing the capabilities of the food (e.g. the layers in the chicken wings, the chunky-ness of the burger), and potential objects and/or animals that they resembled.

Brain storming notes
Storyboarding/potential camera angles and shots

This is the video we looked at for inspiration and guidance, as it was all of our first times to attempt stop-motion.

Wendy Kong

Claudia Lau

Sammy Liu